Russia continues to launch attacks on Ukraine’s capital and other cities, with experts suggesting these strikes are likely retaliatory actions following recent assaults on Kyiv.
Ukrainian officials report that overnight Russian drone attacks injured eight individuals across the country.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian soil have resulted in casualties. A woman was killed when a drone hit her residence in Khimki, a city situated just northwest of Moscow. In the village of Pogorelki, about 10 kilometers north of the capital, two men lost their lives, as confirmed by local Governor Andrei Vorobyev.
Governor Vorobyev also noted that Ukrainian drones had inflicted damage on unspecified infrastructure and several high-rise buildings, according to his social media updates.
In the Belgorod region, which shares a border with Ukraine, a drone strike claimed the life of a man after hitting a truck, local authorities reported.
In Moscow itself, at least 12 people were wounded in the night-time strike, mostly near the entrance to the city’s oil refinery, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported. Sobyanin reported that the “technology” of the refinery hadn’t been damaged.
Russia’s largest airport — Moscow’s Sheremetyevo — said that drone debris had fallen on its grounds without causing damage or affecting flights.
Russian defences shot down 81 drones headed for Moscow overnight, state agency Tass reported, citing Sobyanin, marking one of the largest attacks on the city since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Russian air defences destroyed 556 drones over Russia overnight, the country’s defence ministry said Sunday morning. Shortly after midday local time, it reported that more than 1000 drones had been shot down or jammed in the previous 24 hours.
Zelenskyy said that the drones had flown more than 500 kilometres from Ukrainian territory, and that Ukraine was “overcoming” Russian air defence systems concentrated in and around the capital.
“Our responses to Russia’s prolongation of the war and attacks on our cities and communities are entirely justified. This time, Ukrainian long-distance sanctions have reached the Moscow region, and we are clearly telling the Russians: their state must end its war,” Zelenskyy said.
Revenge for Russian attacks, expert says
Nigel Gould Davies, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank, said that Ukraine’s large-scale attack appeared to be “the retaliation or revenge that President Zelenskyy promised after the fierce attacks that Russia carried out on Kyiv.”
Those strikes came immediately after the end of a brief ceasefire that allowed Russia to hold its annual Victory Day parade on May 9 commemorating the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany during World War II.
“It brings home the fact Ukraine has the capacity to strike at very significant scale at or around the Russian capital,” taking the war home to Russians in a way that would be “most unwelcome” to the Kremlin, Gould Davies told The Associated Press.
“There is no ongoing peace process to disrupt. What (the attack) is more likely to do is add to the darkening cloud of anxiety over Russia which has developed palpably over the last three or four months,” he said.
He cited a combination of factors, including Russia’s recent battlefield setbacks, a deteriorating economic situation at home, and the Kremlin’s intensifying crackdown on the internet, including in Moscow and Russia’s second-largest city, St Petersburg.
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